Ex-Fangio racer could fetch more than £10 million

A Mercedes-Benz W196 raced by Juan Manuel Fangio will be sold at the Goodwood
Festival auction this summer

Bonhams usually comes up with something pretty special for its Goodwood Festival auction, but this year it has outdone itself – not even Bonhams staff knew the identity of the car which was unveiled this week.

On July 12, Robert Brooks, Bonhams chairman, is hoping to bring the hammer down on what could be one of the world's most valuable cars, the ex-Fangio German and Swiss grand-prix winning 1954 Mercedes Benz W196. This is arguably one of the most significant post-war grand prix racing cars and one of just nine surviving examples of the W196 racer.

"This is the most exciting machine that any of us have had the privilege to offer," said Brooks after unveiling the car. "We knew the car existed, it used to be at Beaulieu for years [the National Motor Museum which was formerly the Montague Motor Museum], it was then sold and disappeared for many years."

While Brooks is claiming it is a "farm find", he admits that he "sort-of" knew where it was, although for many years it was not for sale. It is the archetypal "refer to department" lot, with few even hazarding a guess at its value.

Brooks says he has no idea what it will fetch, but says there is a sweepstake at Bonhams and at present the company accountant has the highest bet. One Bonhams insider suggested it could well sell for more than £10 million, surpassing the figure paid for the Bugatti Royale sold by Brooks himself in the Eighties.

The W196 racer is significant for a number of reasons. It came out of a change in racing rules from the Federation Internationale Automobile (FIA) which governs the sport, requiring cars to have unsupercharged engines with swept volumes of no more than 2½-litres. Mercedes built a special car for the formula with a straight-eight cylinder engine laid down in front, with the driver sitting with his feet either side of the five-speed transmission.

This car, chassis 00006/54, an open-wheeled car, was built after Mercedes had dominated the French grand prix at Reims with their streamlined (Stromlinienwagen) race cars. It was quickly established that the all encompassing coachwork was impractical at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone and Fangio requested an open-wheel variant for the German grand prix held at the twisting 14.2-mile Nurburgring.

Juan Manuel Fangio won that grand prix in this car and then repeated the feat at the Swiss grand prix. The car did race again the following year, but Karl Kling was forced to retire from second place at the Italian grand prix at Monza with gearbox problems.

This was the year of the 1955 Le Mans disaster, in which a Mercedes sports racing car loosely based on the W196 somersaulted into the crowd, killing 83 spectators and injuring 120 more. Mercedes withdrew from the race and Switzerland banned all motor racing as a result.

The works Mercedes Benz team contested and won both the Formula One and Worlds Sports Car Championships that year but withdrew from factory-sponsored motorsport at the end of 1955. As Alfred Neubauer, Mercedes team manager wrote in his book, Speed Was My Life; “It was the end of a great era.”

"This car marked the successful introduction to Formula 1 of the multi-tube space frame chassis," says Bonhams historian Doug Nye, "It also won Grands Prix for the first time with all-inboard brakes, the laid-down engine position and all-independent suspension. It is a hugely significant technical landmark but also a social landmark as well, as it reminded the postwar buying public of German engineering at its finest."